Steve McCaskill is editor of TechWeekEurope and ChannelBiz. He joined
as a reporter in 2011 and covers all areas of IT, with a particular interest in telecommunications, mobile and networking, along with sports technology.

Dell says Operating System 10 (OS10), its new next generation networking platform, will provide data centre operators and cloud operators with greater flexibility and a more consistent development environment by separating the software from the stack.

This disaggregation, it claims, will free customers from a specific vendor and, due to being based on Linux, provide a common language for applications that encompass networking, storage and compute layers of IT infrastructure.

Dell OS10

OS10 is one of the products of Dell’s Open Networking initiative and comprises two parts – a base module with various application modules on top.

The base module runs an unmodified Linux distribution and uses the Open Compute Project Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) to provide easy compatibility between the software and physical switch. Applications from Dell, other third parties and contributions from the open source community, such as IP, fabric, security services and automation tools, run on top.

This, Dell says, will enable customers to create the most efficient paths across a networked environment, while the freedom of choice, compatibility with existing systems and, and open source environment can help fulfil the vision of a software-defined data centre.

“Modern, software-defined, data centres require a fresh approach to operations – not just for the network, but across compute and storage elements as well,” said Tom Burns, vice president and general manager, Dell Networking and Enterprise Infrastructure. “OS10 gives customers a future-ready springboard to innovate their networks and data centre infrastructure more quickly and consistently, affording customers greater efficiency and capability at scale.”

It is expected the base module will start shipping in March, while Dell’s first party application modules will enter beta testing for a release later in 2016.